Clinical science: prospects, payment and public policy

The last several decades of this century have witnessed significant changes in health care financing and delivery. Similar changes have occurred within laboratory medicine. While government involvement has been principally in insurance and the control of costs through regulation, the demise of the Clinton Health Plan ushered in an era of deregulation and market competition. In this environment, clinical science and clinical scientists have a new challenge: to prove their worth by establishing methods in which their services and tests are more clinically efficient than competing approaches.